Thursday, June 30, 2005

Book rant

I have far too many books. Many of you reading this will, at this point, gasp and clutch your hearts at my saying that, but when you have to move all your boxes of books upstairs, unpack them all on the floor and then re-pack them according to genre/period/etc. there's a problem.

It doesn't help that I'm incredibly anal about the ordering of my books, right down to sorting them by hardcover, softcover/trade and then alphabetically. Then I further sub-divided them by: 20th Century, Humanist, Renaissance, Victorian, Poetry & Plays, Classical, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Academic & Reference & Miscellaneous. Oh, and signed and first-edition hardcovers are separated out from the other hardcovers, too. But what if an author has written fiction, but also philosophy (ref. Camus, Satre, Huxley, Kafka sorta, etc)? Do they go by genre, or by author? If I only have 3 novels by an author, and two are trade and one is hardcover, should they stay grouped together? Is it cool to put Stephen King (Dark Tower series only) next to Philip K. Dick and Robert A. Heinlein?? What about collections of short stories??? Is that fiction, or should it go in with plays & poetry???? Dear god, help me!!

...... I'm okay now.

I need me an on-site, always-on-hand librarian. Maybe someone with experience at the Library of Congress...